Hidden Treasure
by LylicaGalatea
Summary: He was invisible to all others and wanted it that way. She was aware of him but respected his space: he would nod a silent greeting and she would smile back. A meaningless routine, but then she disappeared and his world changed. Kanda OC. AU
1. Chapter 1

"You're like an hidden treasure. You're hard to find but then, when you're found... it's dazzling".

After an instant of silence her eyes shot open, realization dawning in her mind that she had just said that aloud. She sat up suddenly, blushing fiercely, but this movement caused her injured rib to stab her with pain and she cringed at the sensation, almost toppling forward.

Kanda launched himself to her, grabbing her shoulders and keeping her from falling, and he watched as she laughed and cried at the same time.

"Oh my God, it sounded like a freakin' confession!"

She tried to laugh but folded forward on herself, clasping her side, and with tears rolling down her eyes and a contagious chuckle dancing in her throat she complained:

"I can't laugh, it's so painful! Oh I can't believe I said that aloud! Ah! Too painful to laugh! But I can't stop!"

And she kept convulsing in amusement and pain, crying until Kanda couldn't contain the rolling laughter that tickled his throat anymore and burst out into one of his most rare laughs. They cracked up together for a couple more minutes, their hilarity reborn every time her laughter would cause her to startle in pain and jump on her seat.

Once their laughter faded away she relaxed against the back of the bench and her cheeks resumed their blushed tinge. He hadn't yet commented on her embarrassing statement and she felt impelled to fill the silence.

"The doctor warned me that the anti-depressants could make me less aware of what I say, but I would have never thought that something so embarrassing would ever come out! Damn... talking about blows to my pride!"

"Falling from pain in the street and be watched by passers-by while fighting to breath can't compare to such a poetic confession."

"It wasn't a confession!"

She shouted, burning red cheeks, and then regretted her burst as her rib immediately hurt again. He smirked, enjoying her extreme reactions and feeling the power of controlling her as he would with a puppet.

"Of course, I know it wasn't."

She gaped as a red fish, unsure whether he was making fun of her or being serious. With any other human being it would have been an easy guess, but Kanda had a poker face as expressive as a stone slab and she couldn't tell his intentions at all.

Until he smirked.

At that moment her face became a glowing ember and she sunk, almost ashamed.

Damn sure he was enjoying this moment. She was reduced to a helpless embarrassed puppet he could manoeuvre with his pinkie, his malicious side was feeling tingled.


	2. Chapter 2

She was a student in his same course, they had never spoken to each other but always made eye contact in the morning with an almost invisible head-bow as a silent greeting. For him this was far more contact than with any other student in the course, he was a loner and an aggressive one too, he would not tolerate any attempt at conversation and would not care about the life or death of any of his colleagues. He was there for the lessons and the lessons only. The morning greeting he allowed himself to make kept occurring because she was quite about it, never trampled over his borders and never boasted or assumed their friendship when talking to others. It was a polite gesture that he granted her because she was polite in return, never annoying or demanding.

He knew her name by chance and he remembered it only because of his extraordinary, automatic memory, not because he thought he would ever need to use it. He had filed it in the folder with her face on in one of the countless portions of his mind the day she was called out loud by a professor to answer a question, and he memorised it as he would memorise the name of a street he would walk past, just for the sake of knowledge.

He knew the names of most of his colleagues; he knew their age, their part-time jobs, their favourite lunch spots and even some of their recurring lunch food.

But he never needed to use this information because he had no intention of befriend any of them. He was fine just as an observer, an invisible, silent student sitting in the same seat at the top of the theatre every time, disappearing right after lecture and only seen late in the evening in the library, after the majority of the students had already gone home.

Although she was certainly the one among all of the students he was most close to, they unquestionably couldn't be considered friends and their morning greeting was just a daily habit that didn't mean anything, except for the acknowledgment of their existence and presence in that time and space.

This kind of relationship, if you could call it a relationship, could have gone on unchanged for years, until they would forget about each other after graduation. At least she would have, because he never forgot anything, he just stopped thinking about it.

The first day she didn't come to lecture he was surprised that he had noticed her absence, and it bugged him that he did, although he soon forgot about it, unaware of the fact that he was calmed by the idea that she would for sure be back the morning afterwards.

The second day he stared at the door until the professor shut it to begin his lecture and he snapped out of his trance realising he had been expecting her to come in and send that fleeting smile towards him.

On the third day he felt angry at himself for being concerned by such a meaningless change in his life but still eavesdropped on the students' conversations to grasp any information on her. But nobody seemed concerned about her absence, not even those who used to chat and have lunch with her. He thought that they were not concerned because they must have known where she was and why she wasn't coming to class, and for the first and only time in his life he regretted not having a friend among those people, someone he could ask to.

On the fourth day he didn't have any lecture but often found himself thinking about her at home, and how angry he was that she would dare mess up his unaffected soul so much. By the end of the day he was convinced that it would have been better if she didn't come back at all, because he didn't need such a stupid routine to mean so much to him.

The fifth day he went to university with a resolute expression on his face, convinced that he would be so much happier if that day she didn't show up, but when she walked in the lecture room he felt a pang of relief in his heart, so powerful he shifted on his seat with an expression of utter surprise. Where did all of his anger go? All of his beliefs that he was better off without her? How could he be so enthusiastic of just seeing her?

He waited for her to raise her eyes and meet his, but she didn't raise her head and didn't walk to her usual seat by the window. She walked like a shadow to the first seat closest to the door and sat there silently, alone. It felt to him as if he was the only one in the whole theatre to notice she was back, or at least to care about her presence.

At the end of the lecture he waited on and watched her friends exchange meaningless sentences with her, leaving her alone at her gentle refusal to have lunch in the cafeteria. He wasn't an expert in friendship but he didn't think they were behaving like concerned friends who would instead stay back and ask about her strange behaviour.

The theatre slowly emptied and the sounds slowly faded as the students moved towards their lunch spots. She was still sitting on her own, her coat on her lap and a pen tracing invisible drawings on the desk, thinking, waiting maybe. He knew he wasn't ready to sustain a proper conversation with her, as much as he wanted to know where she had been and why she was behaving like a shadow of her usual cheerful self, he couldn't bring himself to do it. But he couldn't walk past her ad ignore her, not now that all of his being was yearning to have her eyes looking in his, not now that all of her friends had left her on her own.

His steps on the stairs resounded in the empty theatre, echoing in the intimate bubble of silence and emptiness that surrounded her. He could see her stiffen as she realised she wasn't alone and when he approached her, stepping at her side, she turned her head, clasping her pen in her hand and raising her gaze to meet his, alert and scared like a deer.

He diverted his eyes from hers, unable of looking at her, as he let a stack of paper fall on the desk and the hand that was fiddling with the pen.

"Notes from the lectures you've missed."

He stood there dumbfounded by himself, embarrassed and almost ashamed by his actions, a first in his whole life, and he watched her as she picked the notes with her other hand and turned a few pages with the hand that was still holding the pen. She looked surprised but also more comfortable than just a few moments before, and when she smiled thanking him in a whisper he felt overwhelmed by embarrassment and turned around, walking out of the room in silence.


	3. Chapter 3

He was a student in her course. Nobody ever talked to him, but it looked like he wanted it that way. He didn't approach anybody under any circumstance, always sat in the farthest seat on the highest row of the theatre and not a single time stayed on campus longer than needed for the lectures.

She didn't know his name, and nobody of her friends knew it either. She had asked about him to a couple of them but they acted as if they didn't even know who she was talking about. He was invisible. They even started making fun of her, saying she saw dead people that nobody else could see and asking her to question the damned soul and make him predict the winners of the horse races they were betting on. Then one of them decided it was fun to tell everybody the fact that she hadn't had a boyfriend in years and that she had probably such a crave for a man that she must have started imagining them and living an imaginary sex life with some less imaginary sex toys. Oh, the joy. They were loud and stupid and sometimes she could hardly stand them, but she had learned not to be too picky with her choice of acquaintances. Too many years had gone by in solitude and the silence she had once loved and searched for had started to cage her in and crush her. So she had started to go out with the group of friends of one of her acquaintances, but she was starting to think that maybe being a bit pickier wouldn't do her any harm. She decided not to talk about her mysterious man with them anymore, and waited a couple of days until the joke grew old and they stopped inventing new ways to mock her.

She knew he was real. And she was drawn to his evident desire to be alone. She felt she might relate to him, because she had spent so many lone years in complete bliss and her growing dissatisfaction with her apparently cheerful social life was pushing her to look for someone more similar to herself.

So she was attracted or, better, curious but he wasn't easy to approach. You couldn't just walk to him and chat, he was scary, on purpose. It would have been too strong of an approach and she didn't want him to start hating her and finding her annoying. So she just started by watching him. He figured it out pretty soon, because nobody ever looked at him, let alone watching his every step. When he finally returned her gaze, with a threatening look, she smiled at him. Not a flashy toothy smile, just stretched lips and a small nod with her head that only he noticed. She didn't walk to him, she didn't talk to him. It was like getting a wild cat used to her presence before approaching him. She had conquered a big first territory in her attempt to get closer to him when he finally acknowledged her presence by returning the nod. He didn't smile but she didn't expect him to.

So their routine started. It was thrilling to be the privileged one who was conceded a sign of recognition, and although it still wasn't to be considered even a faint acquaintance she definitely had a bond with him that no one else had. Little it mattered that probably no one else even _wanted_ a bond with him, or that any of them even knew she was in a closer position to him than anyone else… it was her secret and she felt unique.

But it kinda crystallized there. She didn't know how to make another step towards him. They kept greeting each other every morning, but she was still surrounded by other people. She thought he was comfortable with the distance and he allowed this relationship to happen because she didn't intrude in his personal space, which was a pretty _wide_ personal space.

She decided to make a late visit to the library, walk to a seat next to him and sit and read without talking to him. She would just smile if he looked at her, but she was sure it was already a big step to be allowed a physically closer position. She couldn't be sure he wouldn't just change seat and stop any other attempt at becoming closer, but she hoped it could just take some time for him to get used to it. She wasn't going to be pushy. She wasn't going to attempt any conversation, not even asking for a pencil. She was going to be as silent as she could and considerate, comfortable in his presence as if they did study side by side since they were kids. She was smiling and thinking about how thrilling it was going to feel to sit next to him and be that close to him that her heart started beating faster in anticipation. She was walking towards the lit up library windows when someone knocked her unconscious from behind.


	4. Chapter 4

**I realised I haven't introduced this story at all yet. So I'll tell you something now. The idea for this came to me in bed... When I have troubles sleeping I try to imagine a story in my mind, like watching a movie. It helps because I fall asleep as the story goes on, and the night after that I resume from where I had left. The stories I imagine are of course influenced by my mood at the moment, so sometimes they are tragic, others gruesome and others are love stories. This one came to me in a moment of loneliness, and the whole concept of friendship and loneliness that you read here has something of my own thoughts and feelings.**

**Something important: the first chapter is the present. Second and third chapters are flashbacks to when the two of them met. So until you read of them sitting on the bench again, it's still a flashback. I will try to keep one chapter on her and from her POV, and the next one on him and his POV. It might seem slower because you will read of the same event twice, but as my readers know I try to experiment with my writing and this one is an attempt at seeing the same thing from both the characters eyes in order to show that although they look different from the outside, both Kanda and her are pretty similar on the inside; and also, to show how communication between two people can be very very difficult and misleading. Nothing new of course, but it's my attempt at it so keep reading if you are interested :)**

* * *

She woke up in hospital, all bandaged up and with no memory of being assaulted. Apparently a man had tried to rape her in a side street but it was a Friday night and a group of drunken friends had decided to make a stop in that alley instead of using some pub's toilet. Her assaulter had decided to run before being found out and the guys who saw her half naked and fainted thought she was dead and called the police.

She stayed in hospital for a couple of days, shaken and hurt but with the unsettling gap in her memories threatening to scare her like a nightmare if she ever remembered some images or sounds registered by her semi-unconscious mind during the assault.

Nurses kept asking if she had someone to call in case of an emergency, but she hadn't. Until some weeks before she had thought she had finally found a satisfying social life, full of people who talked to her on campus and who often invited her out. She had thought she had friends, but now she realised she didn't feel close enough to call any of them in such a situation. She thought about Kanda, how enthusiastic she had been about a mere nod, and she felt an idiot. How could she be happy and satisfied if a guy she only just recently found out the name of greeted her without ever even talking to her? Did he at least know _her_ name? She doubted it. But it wasn't like he had behaved badly. It was her fault, just like always. She had only apparently found friends, when in truth she didn't feel close to any of them because she kept herself at a distance. She was a loner at heart. And maybe that was the reason why she felt attracted by a guy who at best suffered from the avoidance disorder, if he was not a psychopath. He probably didn't think about her and just nodded out of courtesy, although she was faintly aware of the fact that he didn't do anything out of politeness.

She went home when the doctors told her she had been lucky and that she wasn't going to suffer any physical consequence from the assault, given time to heal her rib and bruises. They got that right: physical. But psychologically, she was devastated. Not so much by the assault, although she suspected the fear of being unsafe would grow inside her and bite at her for ever, but by the sudden realisation of the fact that she was indeed still alone, and for the first time being alone was… lonely. She was lonely at home for most of the week. Painkillers and anti-depressants just barely helping her. She received a couple of phone calls and she lied, saying she had been out for the weekend. And they believed it. They didn't really care enough to ask for more, not even out of curiosity. She took it as a confirmation of her fake social life and drowned in loneliness and pessimism, watching tv, eating ice cream and looking at her shut iBook with nausea at the idea of talking to anyone, even if in a chat-room. She felt alone, no, she was alone, so it was time for her to get used to loneliness.

She didn't want friends anymore, she needed true friends. But she wasn't sure they actually existed. She was sure no one would miss her, and they would get used to her absence and find someone as interesting, no, more interesting than her if she stopped going out with them. After all she had been the odd one who didn't laugh at their jokes and had entered the group too recently to really know them. She wasn't going to give them a chance anyway. In fear of being right, she was shutting herself in without even trying. It didn't matter that they probably, or most certainly, would have gone to the hospital immediately if she had called. It didn't matter because she thought that it wasn't out of love, but out of curiosity. She stayed home, drowning in these thoughts until she felt like she had come to terms with her new social situation and her resolution to slowly cut ties with everybody.

When she went to lecture she chose the seat that kept her out of the group of students, and when she was approached to go to the cafeteria it only took a simple refusal, with no explanation whatsoever for them to leave her alone. They didn't know anything was wrong so they didn't question her decision, but she felt that if they were true friends they should have understood something was wrong without her saying it. Heck, she had missed almost a week of lectures. Maybe she was asking too much of them, and again she felt at fault for being so demanding. She was thinking whether telepathy was too much to expect from anyone or true friends should be able to read their friends' faces and understand even the untold, when she heard steps behind her and she suddenly felt the fear of being assaulted again.

She turned, frightened, and the strangest thing happened. He, Kanda, approached her and talked to her.

"Notes from the lectures you've missed."

He had noticed she wasn't there? He had thought of her? He wasn't asking if something was wrong, but it was Kanda and the fact he had taken enough interest in her to notice her absence, _care_ about her absence, approach her, talk to her and give her his notes… well, these were five facts that coming from him meant more than anything her friends could have done. For a moment she thought she was again getting excited for something most people have for granted, but she was so overwhelmed by the feeling of someone reaching out to her without her having to ask, and for it to be Kanda, someone she thought didn't give a damn about her, that she could just only whisper some thanks because if she had raised her voice any louder it would have broken.

* * *

**I'm already onto the following chapter. A very personal adaptation of Kanda's newly revealed past in the manga to my universe.**

**p.s. vote in the poll! Let us know your opinion on dgm's latest chapters! (13th July 2010)  
**


End file.
